January 2025

 Dear Family and Friends,

Well, Thanksgiving has come and gone, Christmas has come and gone, 2024 has come and gone and here we are with a new year.  First and foremost today I wish each of you a blessed and happy new year.  May you each have a wonderful year full of peace, good health, realized dreams, and prosperity.  May we each search for and find peace in Jesus Christ as we pass through this coming year.  May we each lift those around us and help one another along this journey of life.

Some of my thoughts over this past month have been on the many young missionaries that we serve with.  They come with various different challenges.  Things in the  past, current trials, hopes, dreams, desires to do good.  Some of them struggle with self esteem, some with health issues, some with life-long challenges.  We have some who have been abused, some who suffer with depression and/or anxiety.  Some who came home from proselyting missions due to various reasons.  They all have several things in common though; they all love God and wish to serve Him.  They all have a desire to do good.  They all get up each day and face the challenge before them and go out and serve.  These missionaries strengthen me.  They help me want to do my best too.

Our friend Carolina (who was baptized a couple months back) is doing good.  She has expressed interest in getting herself ready to go to the temple.  We are delighted in this and are trying to help her along this path.

Our friend Wayne has been under the radar for more than a month.  We continue to reach out to him, though he has not been responding.  This past week, however, he did finally respond and thanked us for not giving up on him and continuing to be his friend.  Hopefully he will soon be ready to meet with us again.  We had hoped to take him to Temple Square to enjoy the Christmas lights during the holiday season.  Perhaps he will join us for something again soon.

At Welfare Square, we had a fire drill a few weeks ago.  We have a couple missionaries that we felt we needed to pre-warn them so that it didn’t cause them trauma.  One of them is from Colorado where he was present during a school shooting so we didn’t feel that we should surprise him with a fire drill.  The other is our Elder who has Down’s Syndrome.  Both said they would be okay knowing that it was going to happen.  The drill went well and our missionaries did good.  It probably helped that we had been talking about it in our morning devotionals for the previous week or two, helping everyone know what we should do, if ever we needed to exit in an emergency situation.

At our apartment, we had a real fire (and fire alarms).  This is the second occasion that we know of that the residents of our apartments have had to evacuate the building during our time living here (6 months).  Both times it was due to a fire in one of the apartments.  The first time, we were actually out of town.  This time, we were in the apartment and needed to evacuate with everyone else.  I had been asleep in the recliner so it took me a minute to get focused on what was happening.  When Toni and I exited our apartment, Carolina was just exiting her room just down the hall.  She does not have a vehicle and it was in the evening so we invited her to come with us.  We went down the stairs and got in our car and went driving around to see the Christmas lights around Temple Square and in the Avenues.  As we exited the apartment building, we could see smoke coming out of one of the apartment balcony doors.  We assume that it was a kitchen fire.

In both cases, the sprinkler system has turned on in at least the apartment that has the fire, if not also in some of those right next to it.  This has required some clean up and repairs to some of the apartments.  Luckily, we have not been affected in these fires.

Yesterday we joined members of our Salt Lake City Center 3rd Ward in cleaning our meeting house.  It is good to meet with these, our fellow members, regardless of the reason.  They are good people.

This morning, since our Sunday meeting schedule has changed to start at noon, we decided to attend the “Music & the Spoken Word” with the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square and the Orchestra at Temple Square.  This is the first time we have attended this performance.  Toni mentioned a short time back that we ought to be doing this since we are here so close.  It was splendid.  The music was delightful.  One of the songs they performed, “Homeward Bound”, is one of my favorites.  The message today was also very good.  Here are a couple of paragraphs from that message that caused me to pause and think. It is by Derrick Porter.

As I’ve now grown older, I find myself wishing that time could slow down.  I’m even old enough now to at times have remembered a past event and said to myself, “Those were the good old days!”  But a somewhat recent thought has stuck with me: “These days are the good old days of tomorrow!”

At first, that concept felt a bit strange, but as I’ve continued to think about it, I really feel it’s true.  The very days we are in — days that are busy, days that are challenging, even days that aren’t perfect, and most aren’t — these days are the good old days of tomorrow.  These are the days with rich moments that we will look back on and yearn to relive.  These are the days that in the future we will recall with fondness, days when we were growing and being stretched, days when we were learning and experiencing, days when we were making the memories of a lifetime.

We do all get stretched and tried as we go through life; don’t we?  I know each of you have gone through challenges.  But we do so with boldness and courage because of who we are.  We are all sons and daughters of the most high God who loves us and will help us through these challenges that we must endure.  And, when we look back on the challenges of today, we will perhaps wonder at how we got through but we will also feel somewhat accomplished in having done so.  We will feel wonderful that we made it and that we made it well.

We often run into the Temple Square sister missionaries.  It is so fun to do so.  They are from all over the world.  One of the unique things about these missionaries is that they have a flag of their home country that hangs just below their name tag.  My eyes always looks for the ones that have the Brazilian flag and I always have joy visiting with them when there is time to do so.  I love to ask them where they are from and to share with them where I served when I served a mission in Brazil many years ago.  I love to speak with them in Portuguese and wish that my ability to speak and understand it was better.

We pray for each of you, our family, our friends.  May we each look forward to this year.  May we each strive to be kind to our families, our friends, our neighbors and all with whom we come in contact.  May we lighten each others burdens.

We love each of you so very much and miss having the ability to be with you always.

We have seen God’s hand in our lives and certainly here as we serve Him and our neighbors around us.  We feel His guiding hand as we strive to lead our young service missionaries and to help them have good missionary experiences.

With much love,

Grandma & Grandpa,

Mom & Dad,

Friend & neighbor,

Sister & Elder Christensen